our 8 month old female vizsla has velcroed to me so completely that i cant walk to the mailbox without a meltdown, ive gotten used to running in the same room as her but my husband cant even go to a work dinner without a whole scene, and after four months of trying to loosen this bond i need honest vizsla people to tell me if this ever gets better or if we adopted the wrong breed for a two career household

Poppy came home to us at 9 weeks in november, a beautifully bred vizsla from a breeder in vermont with a two page contract and every health test i now understand the meaning of thanks to a lot of reading. we picked the breed for the reasons the internet said, active family, both of us run, we thought we were the exact demo. what nobody told us at any breeder visit or in any of the six books i read was that vizsla velcro is not a personality quirk you can gently train around, its the whole operating system.

the numbers, because i keep coming back to them. one $180 group puppy class we did the puppy pushup rock star routine at, one $220 private trainer visit that recommended a "gradual independence protocol" and gave us a two page handout, a $700 crate setup we abandoned in week two because the screaming was unlike anything we had ever heard from a living thing, a $180 a month daycare we tried for four days that ended with a call to come get her because she wouldnt eat, wouldnt drink, wouldnt stop shaking, and a $340 board certified veterinary behaviorist consult next tuesday that i booked crying in a parking lot last thursday. four months into working on this and i think we have moved from category "puppy is homesick" to category "this dog cannot regulate her own nervous system when i am out of eyeshot."

a normal day for us. i work from home three days a week, my husband is fully in office. she is fine when im here even if im on calls upstairs, she sleeps on the office floor and periodically comes up to touch my knee like shes taking attendance. she is not fine when i leave. we did the whole science, iphone cameras, treat kongs, calming music, gradual departures from 30 seconds to 5 minutes to 15 minutes, and she got demonstrably WORSE over 6 weeks not better, we would come back to a dog whose belly was heaving, drool patches under her chin, and puncture marks on the door frame. we then did four days of daycare which was where the not eating happened, and we then did two weeks with a very kind older neighbor who came and sat with her, and Poppy was fine but the poor woman is 74 and did not sign up to be an emotional support human. last saturday my husband tried to leave for a work event at 6pm, dressed nice, and Poppy vaulted the baby gate she has respected for four months and blocked the door with her body, and i cried and he cried and we sat on the floor and had the "did we get the wrong breed" conversation for the fifth time in two weeks.

so honest vizsla people, no pep talks, i need the real thing. 1. does this bond loosen with age or does it just get better managed, and if it loosens, when, because i am running out of month for the eight month mark to be "just the phase." 2. is a two career household with one WFH parent actually a survivable vizsla home if you build the right scaffolding, or was this a mismatch from the start that no amount of training is going to fix. 3. the behaviorist appointment is tuesday, is there a medication conversation i should be prepared to have, i keep reading forum posts where "just get her on fluoxetine" gets thrown around like its either a miracle or a moral failing and i cant tell what the actual reasonable version of that conversation is. 4. i love this dog so completely it is starting to feel like the problem and not the solution, if you have been where i am at 8 months please tell me what one month later looked like